Bird Flu Threat

The issue of a potential human pandemic from the bird flu is beginning to look like a Chinese fire drill (where the fire alarms goes off and everyone runs screaming in all directions.)

Some news articles say that avian flu hasn't mutated yet to allow direct human-to-human contagion. Other news articles say it has already happened in two cases, one in Vietnam and the other in Indonesia where the victims had no contact with birds (only with an infected person.)

One public health expert claimed a pandemic could kill up to 150 million people worldwide because there won't be a vaccine in time to stop its spread. Other estimates range from 0 (if the virus never mutates) to a few million.

The World Health Organization has issued contradictory statements about the threat.

Who to believe? After the federal government's miserable response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush and Congress has allocated $3 billion to establish a plan for regional quarantines and other measures in case there is a pandemic. It's an attempt to err on the side of caution, but Bush's own health secretary says that no country in the world will be prepared to handle a pandemic.

Meanwhile, migratory wild birds have spread the virus half way around the world. It's now in Asia, Russia, continental Europe and England. It's only a matter of time until it reaches the U.S. and mutates to allow human-to-human infection -- if you believe certain public health experts.

Time to go live in a cave? Or just turn off the TV whenever a new bird flu story appears?

This has been all over the news here. My thoughts are; this has existed for over ten years in Asia, a few people have died of it, it's not really a threat, they're just trying to find some new pharmaceutical product to sell to the population.

I live in Indonesia and so far we already have many lifes taken..not to mention the amout of chickens/bird/pigs that died or need to be destroyed. So yea...this avian thingy seems spooky enough.

I thought that I had heard of 61 confirmed deaths from the avian flu in southeast Asia (not sure if thats official). Lets not forget the unconfirmed deaths and as SubT stated several hundred thousand (maybe over one million) domestic poultry and livestock slaughtered to prevent what appears to be the inevitable spread of the virus. When you start to calculate the economic impact of the flu it takes an entirely different scale. Croatia recently slaughtered 140,000 domestic birds and will endure a ban on the sales of poultry. I don't know that I believe all of the naysayers, but its not always smart to bury your head like an ostrich.
By AUDRA ANG, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 25, 1:01 AM ET


I found this on yahoo news today
BEIJING - A bird flu outbreak sickened 2,100 geese in eastern China and killed about a quarter of them — the country's second outbreak reported in a week, a U.N. official said Tuesday...

Bird flu has killed at least 61 people and tens of millions of chickens in Asia since surfacing in 2003. Most recently, Russia, Turkey, Britain and Romania have reported the disease in birds.

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Originally Posted by B-Mental

I don't know that I believe all of the naysayers, but its not always smart to bury your head like an ostrich.

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I'll stay out of your cave if you stay out of mine.

Seriously, though, I plan to keep abreast of this issue, but I wish I knew who to believe. I live in Hawaii, which will likely be the first state affected since we get thousands of visitors from Asia every day.

I don't have much confidence in the state health department. Three years ago I and hundreds of other Hawaii residents caught dengue fever after the health department failed to quarantine sick airline passengers coming from the South Pacific, where a dengue epidemic had been raging for years. More recently a Filipino woman brought oysters in her suitcase and the people who ate them raw got cholera. This isn't the most vigilant state in preventing communicable diseases.

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Originally Posted by starrwriter

I'll stay out of your cave if you stay out of mine.

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:lol:

Your always welcome in my cave provided you are quarantined first.:) Big Jam party in my cave where we'll work out the lyrics for the song 'Bird Flu Blues' and practice playing 'WMD Blues' ...aka 'I know they got 'em, but I can't find 'em blues'
BYOB food and smoke provided

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Originally Posted by B-Mental

BYOB food and smoke provided

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Good thing I know how to brew an alcoholic beverage from cave fungus. Smells like feet, but packs a wallop.

An update on the potential bird flu threat in the form of an essay:

A Canadian public health official claims there is no reason to be alarmed. She warns that panic among the population will make a pandemic worse. Of course, panic is not good, but these pronouncements sound like a government bureaucrat asking the public not to make her job more difficult rather than an honest assessment of the threat.

Many news reports continue to report 60 as the number of known human deaths from avian flu, but that count is inaccurate. Several deaths in the past several weeks has pushed the actual number to around 70. The mortality rate is slightly over 50% of those infected -- a staggering percentage similar to a disease like ebola and 10 times greater than the 1918 flu pandemic that killed tens of millions worldwide.

H5N1 flu first appeared in Hong Kong in 1997. For eight years no public health official in the entire world expressed concern that the virus would mutate to affect large numbers of people. This despite the fact that (1) it was killing millions of domestic and wild birds as it spread (2)health officials knew that all human flu originates as avian influenza viruses which are prone to mutate until they become wildly infectious from human to human.

Now the public is suddenly inundated with dire warnings, calls to not panic and conflicting scenarios on how the avian flu situation will go in the near future. My question is: what were public health officials doing for 8 years (besides sitting on their well-paid butts)?

One science writer says the whole problem could have been prevented easily by going to the source. Human flu epidemics and pandemics always begin in southern China and southeast Asia, where hundreds of millions of peasants live check-to-jowl with farm animals. Domestic chickens, ducks or geese either pass the virus directly to farmers or through pigs to people. Wild birds pick up the virus from domestic fowl and spread it when they migrate to distant regions.

But how "easy" would it be to change farming habits in rural southern Asia? Poverty is endemic and subsistence farmers use the same methods as their ancestors a millenia ago. Domestic fowl and pigs roam free among human living quarters to forage for wild food since farmers can't afford to buy animal feed. As unhygenic as it is, this system works as a survival technique and it won't change without massive government aid which the host nations are unable or unwilling to fund.

Meanwhile, genetic scientists who revived the 1918 flu virus to study it have noted some scary similarities to the H5N1 virus. Most human flu viruses only kill a tiny fraction of 1% of the people infected and most of them are elderly, young children and adults who were already in poor health before they caught the flu. In contrast the 1918 pandemic killed mainly young and middle-aged adults who were healthy prior to catching the flu. Most of the H5N1 deaths so far have followed the 1918 pattern but with a much higher mortality rate. This means H5N1 is a flu virus of unprecedented virulence.

A vaccine may not prevent a pandemic. One drug company is trying a revolutionary method of developing a vaccine from the H5N1 virus before it mutates to pass easily from person to person, but there is no guarantee this vaccine will work against a pandemic virus. Normally, flu vaccines take at least 6 months to develop and drug companies can't start until they have the strain of virus affecting large numbers of people. By that time it may be too late to stop a pandemic, given the huge amount of airline travel and cargo shipments from hot zones.

The anti-viral drug Tamiflu is being stockpiled by some countries (the U.S. waited too long to order and is at the back of the line), but Tamiflu has shown only limited effectiveness against H5N1 and the virus is becoming more resistant as it mutates.

What is an individual to do in the face of all this? Well, a lot of people are skeptical about the reality of the bird flu threat and I understand why. For a long time certain doom-and-gloom scientists have been spinning end of the world scenarios. Earth will get hit by an asteroid and humans will become extinct like the dinosaurs. Half of an island in the Azores will break off and collapse into the Atlantic ocean, generating a mega-tsunami that will destroy cities on the Eastern Seaboard. The Big One (earthquake) will strike Los Angeles and southern California will fall into the Pacific ocean. The volcano under Yellowstone National Park will explode, covering the planet in ash and causing a new ice age. And so forth.

These doomsday scenarios make people feel helpless because there is virtually nothing we can do to prevent them. Skepticism about the potential bird flu threat is a mental defense against yet another possibility that may never happen in our lifetime (and let's be honest, do we really care what happens after we are safely dead of old age beyond the reach of natural calamities?)

Nevertheless, I find one thing curious. Most people have become accustomed to thinking in terms of a world economy that is blurring the importance of national boundaries. But few people wish to believe that farming practices among poor people half a world away could threaten their lives. I guess we are still parochials at heart.

For a little macabre levity, here's the lyrics of a tune many people were singing in 1918:

There once was a bird named Enza
I opened the window
And in flew Enza

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There once was a bird named Enza
I opened the window
And in flew Enza

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OMG this one is actually hilarious... well if it wasn't serious...
I have a cousin called Enza btw :D (really...it's quite common in southern Italy... She doesnt fly tho :D)

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Time to go live in a cave? Or just turn off the TV whenever a new bird flu story appears?

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The second.
If we cared of all the dangers, we wouldnt eat anyhting anymore, breathe anything anymore, do anything anymore... so I dont like the cave idea. I mean, not that we have not to care of potential dangers, but this things are often blown out of proportion by the media... I live in a country where when TV says something for 2 days in a row, then all the people scream and are worried... then the TV stopd talking about it, and everyone forgets...(I guess it's so pretty much anywhere, but here we and our TVs thend to scream louder). That's mindless alarmism... things dont start being worrying when the tv mentions them and dont stop being when the tv shuts up about them...

And then, as it was mentioned, every media says a different thing, who knows the truth? Let's just be cautious and as calm as possible... until things are proven at least... And screaming doesnt solve anything anyway.

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Originally Posted by Koa

OMG this one is actually hilarious... well if it wasn't serious...
I have a cousin called Enza...

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I thought someone might appreciate my twisted sense of humor.

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Originally Posted by Koa

If we cared of all the dangers, we wouldnt eat anyhting anymore, breathe anything anymore, do anything anymore...

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How true, unfortunately. I still smoke a few cigarettes every day, even though my doctor warns me it will cause lung cancer, heart attack or stroke. He ignores the fact that the majority of smokers die of old age.

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Originally Posted by Koa

... every media says a different thing, who knows the truth? Let's just be cautious and as calm as possible... until things are proven at least...

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You mean I should stop stockpiling breathing masks and jumping every time someone sneezes around me?

Well I can't say I'm not petrified.
But it's not exactly in England just yet, there was one Parrot and he was in quarantine, which we can be thankful for.

I would possibly write more on my opinions of this but I'm off to bed :as-sleep:

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Originally Posted by RococoLocket

Well I can't say I'm not petrified.

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No need to feel petrified. Just stayed informed and make sure your local health department has a workable plan to deal with an epidemic if it happens. Government bureaucrats need to be reminded occasionally to do their jobs.

hi guys,

There is no need to panic..
Just stockpile tamiflu and relenza, the potent drugs to fight the bird flu virus..
These drugs are basically anti-virals and treat the symtpoms of flu too na doffer great resistance.. If the need be the dosage might be increased depending on how severe the case is.

I think I will go fo relenza.

*Edited by Logos to remove a commercial link

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Originally Posted by jaylow

There is no need to panic...Just stockpile tamiflu and relenza, the potent drugs to fight the bird flu virus. These drugs are basically anti-virals and treat the symtpoms of flu too na doffer great resistance.. If the need be the dosage might be increased depending on how severe the case is.

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Even if you can find Tamiflu or Relenza to buy (rotsa ruck), I don't think anyone should start taking them until the human form of avian influenza is verified to be in their community. Anti-virals have serious side effects for some people and they don't work far in advance of exposure.

Let's wait and see how this thing is playing out before we start swallowing pills.

Some good news on the bird flu threat. Scientists are using the latest genetics techniques to get a jump on producing a human vaccine:

LONDON (Reuters) -- No one can predict when or where a bird flu virus will mutate into a human pandemic strain, but scientists are preparing so that when it does, they will be ready to pounce on it, a leading virologist said on Friday.

While surveillance centers dotted around the globe are keeping an eye on changes in the H5N1 bird flu virus, Dr. Jim Robertson and scientists at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Controls (NIBSC) in England are working on vaccines in case it becomes highly infectious in humans.

"The big concern about H5 is that it is so virulent, so highly pathogenic. If that virus gets into the human population and retains that virulence you could imagine what would happen," he told Reuters.

NIBSC scientists have made a vaccine using the H5N1 strain from a Vietnamese patient. They do not know it will work against a pandemic strain but are hoping it will provide some protection until a vaccine against the pandemic strain can be produced, which could take up to six months.

U.S. scientists have also produced an H5N1 vaccine, and early trials have shown it produces an immune response in healthy people.

NIBSC scientists used a technique called reverse genetics to disarm the virus and speed up the vaccine process.

The H5N1 vaccine has been supplied to vaccine manufacturers worldwide who are in various stages of producing it and running clinical trials, Robertson said.